Billu: A Review

By Nimisha Mittal 5 March 2009 292 views 3 Comments

Cast: Irrfan Khan, Lara Dutta, Shahrukh Khan

Dear Shahrukh Khan,

I am sure you receive thousands of letters and emails from crazy fans daily. Just to break the suspense, I’ll tell you right now that this isn’t one of them.

I just stumbled out of one of the theaters showing ‘Billu’ (formerly Billu Barber). No, I was not inebriated. Not even close. Although I almost wish that I had been, for then, perhaps, the film may have been slightly tolerable.

In an industry where people have accepted adding extra ‘K’s and Z’s and X’s to film titles to make them lucky, and protests against film titles such as ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ have become a national pastime, the only way to get by is asking yourself ‘What’s in a Name?’ I did hear about the name of the movie being changed from ‘Billu Barber’ to ‘Billu’ when the hairdressers around the country united in protesting against the film title, calling the word ‘Barber’ derogatory. It generated a lot of publicity. However, the change, besides confusing poster-makers and gazers, making the title 54% shorter, and giving hairdressers something else to snip away at, did not do much for the movie.

I admit that everything about Billu looked promising at first – the soundtrack, the cast, even the first five minutes of the movie, which portray Irrfan Khan, as Billu, making a rather unconventional request for a loan. Billu, a barber in the small village of Budbuda, seems to have everything – a glamorous wife (Lara Dutta), two children (a girl and a boy), and a humongous cottage with a view better than Switzerland – except for a thriving business. His shop is run-down, his comb broken, his scissors rusty, and his only chair has been repaired more times than the Taj Mahal. When his loan request for a shop makeover is refused, he goes back to his regular life, slashing prices to attract customers, and enduring the guffaws of the other villagers.

And then – you make your abrupt entrance in a spaceship and sing and dance with Deepika Padukone. The trees may have been replaced by aliens and an extraterrestrial surface, but the old Bollywood formula never fails, does it? As a super-duper star, you critique your song sequence with the director and the film crew, and decide that the story should be filmed in – where else – the village of Budbuda. I believe that’s where the plot started falling apart.

Of course, the village starts going nuts when it discovers that the shooting will take place in its backyard. A rumor that Billu is friends with you suddenly escalates his importance, and although uncertain at first, Billu plays along, neither promoting nor denying the rumors. The rest of the story could be summarized in one more sentence, but I’ll spare you the embarrassment.

You’re a great dancer. We know. We would have known without the three songs in the movie dedicated to proving that. We also see enough of your waves, swinging shoulders, and flying kisses in real life. You may cower under the illusion that your ‘cameo-role’ made the disaster somebody else’s problem. But seriously, I believe the public has come to expect a little more from you.

The story seemed to stem from a good idea, but remained half-baked, scrambled, and all other adjectives used for unpalatable food. There were some genuinely funny instances during the movie, such as the part where the hotel manager landed a role as a police inspector, and tried to deliver his line. I would have liked to see more of those scenes. However, the director seemed torn between giving you more screen time than Billu, the protagonist, himself. After reaching a difficult balance, he seemed to face the same problem with Billu and Billu’s wife. Halfway through the movie, I was popping tic-tacs (normally reserved for some of my dull engineering lectures) into my mouth to stay awake. The person sitting on my left was already snoring softly.

The biggest problem with Billu was its overdone simplicity. Viewers really are not as stupid as they might have been in the Stone Age (no offence to our ancestors). They can be entrusted to follow plots with a few more twists and surprises. Just throwing in some glamorous actresses and some catchy music is a rather cheap way to attract an audience.

An electrocardiogram of this movie would unquestionably be a flat line.

Yes, I know I should be directing my complaints to the director, the scriptwriter, and the plot-hatcher. But since you are one of the biggest stars in the industry, I would like to see you making prudent decisions as to which films you should sign on to. If your picture on a billboard is the only reason people are going to spend their money on a film which they could easily watch (on TV, of course) a year later, you really do have more responsibility towards them.

I wish you all the best in your future endeavors. Give that shoulder a rest.

Sincerely,

Nimisha Mittal

Photo Courtesy: BilluBarber.Com